MSI offers advance replacement for Sandy Bridge boards

As frustrating as Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset snafu might be, major motherboard makers are at least taking care of their users. MSI has let us know that, in order to "limit downtime," it's now offering an advance replacement option to its customers in North America. That means folks who sign up on this page should have the option to get a replacement board shipped out to them before they return their existing one. The move echoes what Asus announced last week.

MSI has also given us the low-down on the status of its bug-free Sandy Bridge offerings. We're told the firm is "currently in the process of replacing the chipset on all current boards." That probably means shipments aren't much further off now.

In related news, MSI says its upcoming boards based on the bug-free, B3 stepping of Intel's 6-series chipset silicon will feature a sticker to identify them as such. You can see the sticker design above. Here's hoping other motherboard makers will also make it easy to distinguish B3 Sandy Bridge boards from older revisions.